Contributed by ben_conoley. Posted by ben on Monday, July 27, 2009 at 7:10 PM (EDT)

There are two important things to note about Frank Turner. One, he's really good. Two, he really likes to talk. Luckily for myself (Frank Corva), and you - the reader, the stuff he likes to talk about is really awesome. In this, Part 1, of our interview, we discussed his love for the US punk scene, why writing songs that everyone likes is cool and what it means to grow out of your angst ridden teen years and to shed the cloak of anger come your mid-twenties. We also touched upon his Middle Eastern roots as well as the commonalities of punk rock and Catholicism. Read on and enjoy, the man has a plethora of genuine insight.

Turner's debut Love, Ire and Song is being re-released in North America by Epitaph Records. Meanwhile, its followup, Poetry of the Deed is due on the same label in September.

So, what do you think of Frank Turner-mania?

[Laughter] One of the things that I find really interesting and excellent about the differences between the punk scene in the UK and the punk scene in States [is that] the American punk scene is very familiar. Everybody knows everybody. You got punk bowling tournaments. The UK punk scene barely exists. It‚??s just really fucking bitchy. I‚??ve spent the last few years trying to distance myself from punk as a concept. But then it‚??s really nice for me to come to this country and punk over here is so much better, so much nicer. I‚??ve got no problem at all coming up in the punk scene in the States. You know, I‚??m doing that Gaslight Anthem tour in September and to do that tour I had to turn down Bouncing Souls and Flogging Molly. I cannot fucking believe I‚??m saying no to a Bouncing Souls tour!

Ouch, nor can I, but it seems like you and Gaslight are a good match. Aside from having toured together in the past, you‚??ve both risen to popularity relatively quick and mostly because you simply got better at songwriting. This is often frowned upon in punk rock, but, unknown to many, both yourself and the members of Gaslight have all toughed it out for years and years in other bands.

Okay, I had this revelation the other day. Punk rock is very, very much like Catholicism. It gets you when you‚??re young, you probably hate it at some point, but it never goes away. It still informs the way you see the world. And then when you die you‚??ll get blessed by a priest and‚?¶ and I don‚??t know, Brett Gurewitz or something [Laughter]. One of my least favorite things about punk rock is that a healthy suspicion of authoritarian major label structure kind of things more often than not just blends into it a plain old fucking distaste for the notion of success. That‚??s bullshit. I mean, Gaslight, good example, they‚??ve had too many scene police haters coming out and shit. To my mind, it‚??s like what could be more fucking wonderful than a band who fucking done it right and who are from your part of the world being on [the] David Lettermen show or Conan O‚??Brien?

Both of ‚??em.

Right, what could be more cool than that? That‚??s a fucking victory for our little corner of culture. There were a couple "umms" and "ahhs" about the fact that I was touring with The Offspring. It‚??s like, "You know what, man, I wanna play to more people. I just want to promote my music." All of that aside, it‚??s like, "Fuck you, Pal, you didn‚??t suddenly at 13 years old walk into a record shop and pick up a Black Flag album. You fucking got into punk rock through The Offspring or Green Day or Sum 41 or Rancid," you know, depending on which age group. I‚??ve got no fucking shame in saying that Rancid and The Offspring are basically the two bands that got me into punk rock. That kind of denial of the fact of the matter is kind of like, "Yeah, I woke up one morning and all of the sudden The Descendants were my favorite band." It‚??s like, "Fuck you, that‚??s bullshit." I‚??m rambling on‚?¶[Laughter]

You seem to have created a balance between ethics and universality in your music.

That‚??s the other thing about the whole sort of punk rock pretentiousness at the end of the day. I don‚??t want my sole audience to be angry white men. That‚??s fucking tedious to me. I often describe myself as parent-core. In the UK, not so much now, but a few years ago, I did this tour that had a really young audience and at those shows there‚??d be quite a lot of parents who, essentially, were just there to look after their kids and at the end of the night they would come over and just be like, "Hey, I wasn‚??t here to hear any music at all, I was just here to make sure that my kids didn‚??t get beaten up, high or laid and, fuck, I really enjoyed that kind of thing." That was one of the big reasons why Million Dead (Turner‚??s old punk band) broke up. I was so tired of having to explain the parameters of what we were trying to do - "Yeah, I know it‚??s really loud and heavy, but we‚??re also trying to say this." I still love heavy music, but 90% of my friends would just be kinda like, "I don‚??t like it, I don‚??t care anymore."

Your bio says you were born in the Middle East. Please expand.

[Laughter] I put that in the bio. I just kept doing it as a joke actually. My Dad was banker and was on a posting in the Middle East for a year. Six months later I moved back to England. I‚??ll tell ya what, the main impact that that has on my life now is that my place of birth on my passport is Muharraq (Bahrain). [Laughter] Try getting into the USA with fucking Muharraq written on your fucking passport!

Moving on to your teen years, you were in a band called Kneejerk and your bio says you guys played with Boysetsfire. What was that band all about?

[Laughter] Basically, I was in Kneejerk from the ages of 16 to 19 when I was in school and we were totally DIY. I mean, we did a tour when I was 16 years old, which was a total disaster. Lost a fuck ton of money. The Boysetsfire. thing was just basically my generation of punk rock in the UK was based around a record label called Household Name records which kind of kicked off in about ‚??95. So, this guy Lil ran Household Name records and it was like the only hardcore thing in the UK and Boysetsfire. had just put out The Day The Sun Went Out, which is one of my lifetime favorite albums. Goddamn I love that record. Basically we had this band that we formed and we called up Lil and we said, "Lil, Lil! Can we get on the bill and open up the show?" And he said "no." 24 hours later we called him and we said, "Lil, Lil! Can we get on the show?" This is like three months before the show. Basically, we called him everyday for about six weeks and eventually he was like, "Fuck off! You can play 20 fucking minutes, just never call me again!!!" In the even there was gonna be a four band bill with us up first and then the band that was supposed to be going straight on after us canceled so we got a half hour set. It was the worst fucking gig ever. Then I saw Boysetsfire. and just wept like a little child. They were so fucking good.

Like, real crying?

I don‚??t know, man, shit was pretty emo back in the day. [Laughter] That would be ‚??97. This was like pre-Taking Back Sunday. There was a time a long time ago when I used to tell people that I listened to emo [and] they wouldn‚??t have any idea what I was talking about. I remember photocopying lyric sheets to Mineral records and just giving [them out]. Mineral was one of my favorite bands. I was so obsessed with that band and the first Get Up Kids record. None of those bands ever toured the UK. I was in a friend of mine‚??s house in Phoenix, AZ last year and he‚??s one of those guys who‚??s got framed tour posters from decades all over his walls and there‚??s one the tour was like Mineral, Christie Front Drive, Get Up Kids and Jimmy Eat World. I was like, "Oh my God!," if any one of those bands ever came to the UK I would have pissed my pants. Another one, there was a tour that was like fucking Converge, Botch and Cave In on the same bill. I think I‚??d actually pass out if I saw that.

Whoa. I want to touch on Million Dead for a minute. I know it‚??s probably a sore topic because of the "irreconcilable differences" I‚??ve read about, but a significant amount of your fans seem to be checking out MD at this point.

Million Dead was kind of like the band of my youth. It was when I was fucking young, pissed off, excited and new to the scene. All of that kind of stuff was channeled into that band. I remain, to this day, fighting proud of that band. I think we made two albums and I think they‚??re both fucking good and I maintain that at that time within the UK scene we were one of the best live bands around. The funny thing with this re-release is the live DVD with it. I hadn‚??t even thought about any of that shit for about four years or whatever. The DVD got sent through for me to watch and approve of and all this shit and I was like, "Fuck, if I was a kid going to this show I‚??d be beating the shit out of everyone in a 10 mile radius." We wanted to be a cross between Black Flag, The Clash and Refused. We were like, "We‚??re going to be the end all punk band that‚??s ever fucking been. Obviously, we weren‚??t, but we tried and we put on a fucking show and we wrote some cool songs. So, yeah, that was the idea behind the re-release. I just felt like it should be out there if people want to hear it. I was so much more physically fit when I was in that band, man. I was basically jogging on the spot for an hour and half going, "Rah rah rah rah." It‚??s just like, whooooooa. Back then it was fine. I was just doing my show, trying to fight the front row. Them days are gone.

I never really got the point of the band of the moment. I can't say that I miss it in the beta, and I do like the new look, the edit feature and the new profile layout. I'd say it's a definite improvement.

Great interview. I had exactly the same experience with Mineral and Get Up Kids and stuff, though it happened to me a few years later. Was still before Taking Back Sunday really took off over here, though, so I've had basically the exact same thoughts.

A bit harsh, but probably fair on the UK punk scene. It can be shit and brilliant in equal measures, just depends where you are, who you're with and what day you catch it on.

Kind of getting bored of Frank, though. I mean, he's really good and stuff, and seriously fair played to him for getting so far and stuff, but there's better stuff out there than him.

im just gettin bummed out with the lesser choice. i buy all snacky food so when i buy a sandwich i usually only get to choose between cheese and cheese. takeaways are also pretty dull. i miss chicken curries and things

i only lasted for a year and half. then one day i walked by the italian street fair for the fourth time in as many days and the sausage, peppers, and onions beckoned me. what a shit i took that night. yikes.

i've been a vegetarian for about 4 years now. i'm not trying to change your mind, because, honestly i don't care what you do with your life. your choices. i am curious about what you eat, though. i know a lot of vegetarians, or people who stopped eating meat and ate poor diets. there's a lot of meat-free dishes to make that maybe you're not aware of. miss meat sandwiches? smoked tofurkey with soy cheese slices taste like the real thing, seriously.

im talking to this girl right now that i dated for 3 years. this is the first time ive talked to her in 2 years. she basically fucking ruined my life when we broke up. she wants to hang out. i know its a terrible idea. but i really want to fuck her again because shes by far the hottest thing ive ever touched.

So much no. If you just want to fuck her, go for it. But once you see her your hearts going to drop and if you were with someone for 3 years, you know those feelings dont just disappear.
So yes if all you want is to fuck.
And a no if you even want to cuddle after. Its a fuck and get the fuck out type of situation.

Im kind of in the sameboat right now. As long as I dont see her, Im fine.
But as soon as I lay eye contact on her my heart drops and my breathing deepens and all I want to do is run up and kiss her. Even though I KNOW shit will never be what it once was.

but the thing making me want to do it is im leaving for college in like 3 weeks and she is too and we are going completely different places. so maybe i could just score one epic fuck and then never have to see her again.

Someone recomend me an album. Im currently bored with my music collection.
And not to pick at Blackjaw, but nothing with the gruff vocals that sounds like a duplicate of PBC. I have enough of that to listen too.
Go!

Pretty like how? Like Lemuria pretty? And it should be noted that for some reason I have a really hard time getting into female fronted bands, I dont know why. It took me a while to come to terms with Lemuria. And even Bridge and Tunnel.
And Algebra One sounds promising.

I do it too, but I hope for those bands I listed you're not clicking on one song and listening to a few seconds of it at various points in the song. If you want I could tell you one song from each band that you can find on their myspace, you listen to the whole thing, everyone's happy.

Well it's just that some songs won't be as appealing initially, so you'd be better off starting with others. Other than that "first impression" mentality for recommending bands, I'm not a song guy whatsoever either.

to be completely honest, im not even sure. ive always been into 90's stuff, so maybe i just saw their name somewhere?
all i know is that i loved Piles of Dirty Winters when i first heard it. Also, i just found a link to an OOP Ep ive been looking for a while. listening to it right now.

Really great interview. I hope part 2 goes up tomorrow. He was great and funny in Baltimore. I'm not often starstruck but I definitely felt a tween fangirl shiver when I saw him hanging out int he alley next to the Talking Head.

Part of me is honestly excited for the new one if for no other reason than the last one was FUCKING INSANE. It's been a long while since I had a teen romance, but I don't recall anyone of them involving stalking and breaking into someone's home to watch them sleep.

Also apparently when he yelled "THIS IS THE SKIN OF A KILLER!" and then proceeded to sparkle like a ten year old girl's notebook, it wasn't actually supposed to be funny. If you remind yourself that idiotic teenage girls and their emotionally stunted mothers treat the books and the movies as SERIOUS BUSINESS while watching it takes on a whole new dimension of lunacy.

Kind of, but the people making modern horror movies more often than not have a sense of humor about the genre tropes and bad writing/acting.

The Twilight people, on the other hand, view the books as GRATE LITRATURE despite the fact they are the result of the rambling, barely coherent id of a severely depressed housewife who hates her life. They are so awful that the people who run Comic Con created a special convention JUST FOR THEM so they would stop ruining Comic Con for everyone else.

i almost did last weekend, then again i almost got dragged into seeing a fucking terrible band last weekend too. why my friend like's playradioplay is such a mystery to me. i basically lied to each person telling them i was going to do the other, and instead went to a bar. i will get caught in that lie, but i just don't have it in me no more to tell somebody the harsh troof anymore.

anyone ever been to lake geneva in wisconsin? i'm going camping there this weekend. it's me, my friend, and 4 or 5 chicks plus massive amounts of booze and pot. i never thought i would be so stoked to go camping with that many chicks, but that just upped my chances to getting laid. i hope i don't drown when we go tubing, i have a feeling i won't be sober for any of this trip.

the only friend that i have around my area that listen's to the same type of music i do, wanted me to see playradioplay last weekend. i never heard of them until then and i'am glad i listened to them before making up my mind. wtf is he thinking>? i guess it's just my wife now, everybody else around here has no good taste in music.

i feel your pain.its either electro/ neon kids or black metal kids (they have some kind of 'underground' movement' thing going on).then there are loads of metallica/sabbath middle aged men which i always find amusing.

I'm watching Kundun and it sucks. I'm only going to finish it because Scorsese directed it.

I also watched the new 3:10 to Yuma today and it sucked too. It only had one redeeming quality and that was Christian Bale's acting. Everything else was dumb. The character development made no sense and was unjustified. The plot was senseless and full of holes. And worst of all, they turned it into just a mindless action flick. I'm fine with action, but between the main 12 characters, they probably shot more rounds of ammunition than were fired during all of WW2, in both the European and Pacific theater. It was fucking stupid.

I've only seen Pirates once. Been trying to get another copy of it forever. Apparently the only method of getting it right now is on the Italian amazon.com site. I don't think I want to take my chances and get some weird release with fucked up audio. I hope they release it in the US.

Solyaris is great. Both of those are Russian films. Ballad of a Soldier was pretty good but I was expecting more.

I was just curious. The reason I asked is because you seem to have great tastes in movies, but I've just never seen you mention a Russian one. Which is fine. It's one of my favorite countries when it comes to movies. I was just wondering if what your experience has been.

If someone said that too my face, I would be taking a bath in their blood 5 minutes later, and pictures of the incident would be up on myspace 10 minutes later as an example to all of my other friends.

Tonight's Jeopardy was the teen edition and one of the categories was "Columbian Connections," which I thought was hilariously inappropriate. They should have saved that one for the Tournament Of Hipsters or Jeopardy: Live From The Stall In The Men's Room At The Gay Bar Last Weekend

So yeah Algebra One is awesome so far (still finishing up Conscious Pilot). I think I like their instrumental parts the best, which usually isn't the case with these sorts of bands... for some reason I got REALLY into the last bit of "Reverb". Thanks, Steve.

By "these sorts of bands" I don't mean all the ones in the (sub)genre, I mean the ones that are usually singing/shouting and there are few instrumental parts that mostly show up in the beginnings and ends of songs and as bridges, and are forgettable. With this band I'm attentive the entire time.

Wow Hellbender is fucking awesome. Any more bands you have like these two, let me know. You don't have to go through all the trouble of uploading them if you don't want, just don't let me miss out on good music or I'll go nuts.

When Im blasting 25! in the car I always get weird reactions from people if Im at a stoplight for the first 15 seconds of the song because they think its techno. Then it just goes off and Im banging my steering wheel and shit.
I actually had one guy flick me off the other day and roll up his window. Ioled.

I'm afraid not sir. Milemarker the band is Al from Hellbender, Dave from Griver and a Hydra Head rotating cast for the rest. Punk Rock with random melodic keyboard blasts and lyrics ranging from freezing to death, odes to insect sex and vengeance. They were great.

Basically all of my friends here listen to metal or All Time Low. Yeah. One of my friends is into some of the music I am, but he has a kid on the way, and has to stick around and save cash. So I got nothing on that front, but I can check around anyways

Well, I live in between both places. But that would be a drive for each of you. Or if Mental_Decay wanted we could just meet up at my place in Norman. It's literally 30 seconds off I-35 and we could ride down together to Texas.

Oh whoops, I thought Mental Decay lived in Dallas. I'm guessing he's the one who lives in Kansas?

And looking at a map, if we take I-40 to Memphis and then I-20 to Atlanta, then yeah, it'd be better to meet at your place. Or if we took I-49 down Louisiana and then I-10 along the coast, it'd probably be easier to pass through my place. I don't know which way would be shorter.

there was a thing in madden 06 i believe. you could be the falcons and do a shotgun snap to michael vick then run east/west and edge the defenders basically every time. endless TDs. that fucker was fast.

When Owens said "Its like kicking a horse when its down" today when he was defending Vick.
I wished so hard that he really said "Its like kicking a dog when its down." It would have been endless lol's.

You said the hole in your head
Has gotten bigger than the hole that's in your chest
And your stuck between the past and present tense
You said you've been waging a war against so many years of lies
With stronger drinks and longer lines, it's no surprise
That you're feeling more dead than alive

Wow, this is like reading from a template that all 'rock musicians', trying to selling their arse to get famous, use.

Let me guess, this guy does that whole acoustic soup of the day thing right?

Needed a wider audience. Check.

Badmouthing the (U.K.) scene that spawned the bands were you were in five years ago (whoever they were). Before jumping to whatever new trend gets you signed. All the while sucking up to whichever country it is you happen to be in. Check.

And of course, the old 'punk is shit now I don't need the gig circuit anymore, although it is valuable for occasional street cred' line. Excellent! Check.

Does a 'plethora of genuine insight' mean you just happen to happen to agree with him? Saying punk is like a religion? You're right! That's genuine insight! No-one ever thought of that one before.

Oh, and yeah, I did happen to be 13 when I walked into a record shop and bought a Black Flag album. Big deal.

Maybe not being spoonfed 'punk rock' by the TV at 13 helped old farts (who stuck around) like me appreciate WHY punk rock meant something beyond a t-shirt to wear until the deal gets inked.

Well he's kinda refering to the fact that punk rock really just talks to itself. theres no outcome. if youre not into punk the message is lost. you should grow some balls and realize that mainstream people need to hear the message in order for them to get it. punk will never affect the masses if it doesn't get out there. stop bieng stupid. if you really want shit to change then you can't preach to the converted, you're still living in high school. you can't have a revolution if people arent listneing

Frank Turner's debut album is Sleep Is For The Week, not Love Ire and Song.
Though SIFTW contains songs that were released on the early EPs but still, I don't think it's considered compilation album and therefore was his actual debut